[Unstagram] A Telescope to See the Past

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has recently captured news of detecting the oldest active supermassive black hole ever observed by humanity. It is located 13 billion light-years away, a black hole 9 million times the size of the Sun, formed 570 million years after the Big Bang. A light-year is both a measure of distance and time. Saying 13 billion light-years means we are seeing it as it was 13 billion years ago. Such a distant past is, from our perspective, the present. To know what that black hole looks like now, or whether it still exists or has vanished, we would have to wait 13 billion years?a worldview that is truly astronomical.

?NASA

The first-ever 'photograph' of a black hole captured by humanity was revealed only recently, in April 2019. Although it was not very different from the imagined illustrations we had seen before, it was the first actual photograph taken. The telescope that captured this image was called the 'Event Horizon Telescope' (yes, it is a telescope, not a camera). It combined data from radio telescopes scattered across continents on Earth (not by synthesis but by aggregation) to produce an image equivalent to one taken by a giant telescope the size of Earth. Just as human eyes perceive distance and depth, the eight telescopes spread across Earth's continents acted as one Earth-sized eye, enabling three-dimensional observation of distant celestial bodies and distance measurement. The name 'Event Horizon' refers not to a single instrument but to a system of multiple telescopes connected together, along with tangible and intangible workspaces and computational processes. It is both the name of the equipment and a concept?a kind of operation name that sums it all up. The concept of an Earth-sized telescope as a sum of multiple viewpoints is both scientific and poetic. It also includes a philosophical worldview about how to observe the universe. Science starts from human imagination to substantiate the laws of the universe. Science and technology steadily bring what was once impossible into the realm of possibility. Imagination plays a crucial role in this process. Imagination is the driving force that transcends the here and now to create a worldview larger and broader than oneself.

M87 black hole at the center of the Virgo galaxy. Located 55 million light-years away, with a diameter of 40 billion km, it is the first black hole photo ever 'captured' by humanity using the Event Horizon Telescope. ⓒNASA

With the fact that human technology finally managed to actually photograph a fragment of the universe at such an immense (how modest a term that is) distance, I was moved by the symbolism and metaphor embedded in the telescope’s name. 'Event Horizon' is a name that explores scientific facts but is also philosophical and literary. The word 'event' carries a strong philosophical weight, and 'horizon' is a noun with many literary uses. Together, these two words form a name that is scientific, philosophical, literary, and therefore human and holistic. The horizon is the last point we can actually see. Beyond it, we cannot see what exists or what is happening. Science proves facts about things we cannot see in other ways. The photo showing the actual appearance of the black hole?a red elliptical light ring?was not unfamiliar because it resembled the technical illustrations we had seen before. This means the hypothesis was not wrong. Only the aura of 'realness' surrounded the photo, looking at us heavily. Seeing the red ring, we became more confident in calling it a 'black hole' because it was confirmed by science. A documentary made afterward showed dozens of scientists cheering "It's red!" at the moment they confirmed the photo as the result of long research. Countless scientists worked together to solve multidimensional equations incomprehensible to ordinary people over several years, and the answer was 'red.' Not a number or matter, but the ordinary red color visible to the naked eye. The red color is the result of a fact from billions of light-years away in the universe reaching human senses.

We still do not know exactly what is inside the black hole within the red ring or what happens there. We only know that strong gravity even pulls in light. From the untouchable premise of spacetime distortion, I do not even superficially understand what actual effects it has or what it does. Even if unknown, the red ring, the outer shell of the fact of existence, may be like the limit of vision reachable by language. Inside the black hole can only be spoken of through imagination or hypothesis. The red, round horizon is outside language; inside the hole is beyond language. What is visible and what can be spoken of even if invisible, and what is visible but cannot be approached by words?all are outside language. The outside of language, the world unreachable by language, is all an image created by senses and imagination. Language talks about the outside and lets people look inside. Sensation and imagination transferred from language, and conversely language drawn through imagination from sensation, are all projections through tangible and intangible worlds of images. In other words, they are translated sensations.

A photo released by NASA to commemorate the 1st anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope, showing the birth of stars. ?NASA

Science and technology expand the meaning of seeing beyond visual appearance to include all signs of movement or change such as sound or waves, reaching human senses. Concepts create imagination, imagination creates images, which form hypotheses, and science realizes and proves them. Ultimately, without images created by imagination, human thought and expectation would take longer to be realized.

Some of the stars shining beyond the campfire are located hundreds of light-years away. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the person looking at the stars, both the campfire and the stars exist in the present. (Kamchatka, Russia, 2008 ⓒHuh Younghan)

Three years after the first black hole photo was released, the 'Event Horizon' captured and showed another black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The size of our galaxy is unimaginable even by imagination, but the fact (or event) that there is a black hole at its center is awe-inspiring. NASA continues to release space photos taken by the latest space telescope, James Webb. These new photos are much clearer, deeper, and show more stars and galaxies than previous images. Distance is time, and light is the medium that conveys time. The past is delivered to the distant future, another time, contained in the vessel of light. Both time and light are vast, but numbers are concrete. Riding the carriage of the thought called the past and going back to when we were not even a speck of dust feels even more immense. Science and technology show us increasingly older pasts more clearly. Beyond showing, they take us there. The past is not something that just passes by but gradually comes closer and clearer before our eyes. It appears in clear photos saying, "The past is now."

Editor's NoteThis is a slow reflection and writing about the photographic story that is not instant (insta~) but uninstant (un~), and about the relationships before and after photos and the world.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.